Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Digital technologies such as analytics, mobility, social networks, cloud computing and the Internet of Things are making old ways of working redundant and forcing companies to transform. According to Raman Sapra, global head of Dell’s digital business services, the best…
Design & The City explores citizen-centered design approaches for the smart city. Central theme is the role of design(ers) to create opportunities and practices for citizens, (social) entrepreneurs and policy makers towards more liveable, sustainable and sociable urban futures. At…
The Quantified Self By Gina Neff and Dawn Nafus MIT Press, 264 pp. April 2016 Oops, that is confusing: two books by sociologists on the quantified self movement, both entitled “The Quantified Self” and both appearing in April 2016. The…
The Rolls-Royce Unified Bridge Design has won this year’s Ergonomics Design Award, presented by the UK Chartered Institute of Ergonomics & Human Factors. The award recognises industrial design which puts the customer at the heart of the process using their…
Following the lead of the United States and the United Kingdom, Ireland switched over from analogue to digital television transmission on 24 October 2012. Using the occasion as a jumping-off point, Analogue People in a Digital Age chronicles the switchover…
Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practice By Sarah Pink, Heather Horst, John Postill, Larissa Hjorth, Tania Lewis and Jo Tacchi (RMIT University) SAGE Publications October 2015, 216 pages Abstract This sharp, innovative book champions the rising significance of ethnographic research on…
Who Benefits From Civic Technology? Demographic and public attitudes research into the users of civic technologies Rebecca Rumbul, Head of Research, mySociety October 2015 mySociety, 31 pages mySociety’s longterm mission is to understand the impacts of civic technologies. But before…
Andrea Siodmok, head of the UK Cabinet Office Policy Lab explores how design is helping government think differently about future policy. Design is emerging as a significant force for change in governments across the world. What is it about design…
Sociologist Brooke Harrington realized that if she were ever going to understand global inequality she would have to become one of the people who helps create it. So she trained to become a wealth manager to the ultra-rich. Although she…
Paul Mason, economics editor at Channel 4 News and occasional columnist at The Guardian, writes about an alternative smart city vision: the “non-neoliberal smart city” that is currently being developed in Madrid: Instead of seeing the city as a “systemâ€,…
IKEA has undertaken a major research-driven project in 2014 across 12 countries (report here) to explore the subjects of children’s development and play, and young people and parents’ perception of family life at home. This is a follow-up to the…
Designing the Second Half of Life: Innovation for Aging A visual white paper by Karten Design September 2015 The next 30 years will be a defining era for the American healthcare system, as the number of adults aged 65 and…
On August 31st Julian Bleecker and Nicolas Nova from the Near Future Laboratory organised a full day design fiction workshop in Sweden focused on the consumer-oriented Internet of Things. The goal for the day was to create a catalogue in…
Watching Closely: A Guide to Ethnographic Observation by Christena Nippert-Eng Oxford University Press, October 2015 296 pages Ethnographers rely on three related activities to conduct research in the field: observation, conversation, and participation. Observing others in their environments and using…
Tim Adams has published a long interview with Sherry Turkle, MIT Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology, in the Observer (the Sunday edition of the Guardian). For nearly thirty years, writes Adams, she has been exploring the…
The White House’s Social and Behavioral Science Team (SBST), a cross-agency effort to bring behavioral science research into the policy making process, has just published its first annual report, which covers just 15 proof-of-concept projects in this first year. Politico’s…
The Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s new national centre for data science, will focus on “drawing value out of the data”, writes Emily Cadman in the Financial Times. According to the Institute’s website, the mission is to “undertake data science…
Why do some people spend all day in a gallery while others dash around in an hour? Laurent Carpentier wonders what is the difference between the 3.6% of respondents who reported that they had spent more than six hours exploring…
Cars that are autonomous most of the time (but not all the time) are dangerous, argues Donald Norman: “Whether you are fan or foe of completely autonomous vehicles, note that it will be decades before we have full automation of…
Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking By Richard E. Nisbett Farrar, Straus & Giroux August 2015 Description Scientific and philosophical concepts can change the way we solve problems by helping us to think more effectively about our behavior and our world.…